How to Be Emotionally Intelligent

By DANIEL GOLEMAN

APRIL 7, 2015

What makes a great leader? Knowledge, smarts and vision, to be sure. To that,Daniel Goleman, author of “Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence,” would add the ability to identify and monitor emotions — your own and others’ — and to manage relationships. Qualities associated with such “emotional intelligence” distinguish the best leaders in the corporate world, according to Mr. Goleman, a former New York Times science reporter, a psychologist and co-director of a consortium at Rutgers University to foster research on the role emotional intelligence plays in excellence. He shares his short list of the competencies.

1. SELF-AWARENESS

Realistic self-confidence: You understand your own strengths and limitations; you operate from competence and know when to rely on someone else on the team.

Emotional insight: You understand your feelings. Being aware of what makes you angry, for instance, can help you manage that anger.

Resilience:You stay calm under pressure and recover quickly from upsets. You don’t brood or panic. In a crisis, people look to the leader for reassurance; if the leader is calm, they can be, too.

2. SELF-MANAGEMENT

Emotional balance:You keep any distressful feelings in check — instead of blowing up at people, you let them know what’s wrong and what the solution is.

Cognitive and emotional empathy: Because you understand other perspectives, you can put things in ways colleagues comprehend. And you welcome their questions, just to be sure. Cognitive empathy, along with reading another person’s feelings accurately, makes for effective communication.

Good listening: You pay full attention to the other person and take time to understand what they are saying, without talking over them or hijacking the agenda.

4. RELATIONSHIP SKILLS

Compelling communication: You put your points in persuasive, clear ways so that people are motivated as well as clear about expectations.

Team playing: People feel relaxed working with you. One sign: They laugh easily around you.

From La Fenice to Sarajevo, Music&Emotions to help underprivileged children

SARAJEVO – Taking time off from the gilded concert hall of La Fenice, a leading Italian violinist will play next week for underprivileged Bosnian children using music therapy to help those less fortunate. Sara Michieletto, who has performed with top orchestras across Europe and the United States during an illustrious career and since 1998 has played in the first violins of the orchestra of the opera house in Venice, will perform classical music to help angry, traumatised youths become emotionally aware and enabling them to better channel anger and frustration.

Sara Michieletto in Indonesia

Before Sarajevo, Michieletto has played her violin for children in Africa, across the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, in Indian slums and helping street kids and orphans in Indonesia. “In the case of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, this is so important because they have faced a lot of difficult things in the past and trauma,” she said in a recent interview with AFP: “Music is a very powerful means of conveying emotions.”

In the Bosnian capital the laboratory “Music and Emotions” has been organized by the Italian Embassy and the NGO SOS Village: “Once again Italy puts its huge cultural heritage to show solidarity with the host Country”, said Italian Ambassador Ruggero Corrias. Under a special arrangement with the Fenice Foundation, Sara Michieletto is able to carry out her charitable work and continue playing with the opera house’s orchestra for a short period each year. In Sarajevo she has performed on April 3 at the Muzička Akademija for a wider public free of charge and will do an “encore” on April 8.

La Fenice

Michieletto started playing for underprivileged children first in Mozambique in from 1996 to 2003, then in 2004 when she toured with UNESCO schools around the West Bank for several weeks. In the decade since she has played for thousands of children around the world. In 2005-2006 she was in Eritrea, where she designed and implemented the project entitled “Introduction to music and self expression”, a project targeting women and children in Asmara, in collaboration with the Filippini Religious Sisters and other local institutions.

Music of Emotions

“Researchers are realizing more and more the degree to which the emotional development of children can influence their mental state and thence their physical state”, Michieletto explains on her website: “We dedicate a lot of time to teaching our children how to behave at table or how to dress, yet we expect them to be able to learn by themselves how to handle complex emotions such as anger, sadness and frustration”.

According to Sara, “it’s natural to associate sounds with feelings. The strains of a violin are ideal for conveying different feelings to different listeners: reminiscent of a human voice, easy to transport, eclectic, present in most cultures all over the world, the violin is the instrument of choice for approaching the most diverse sensitivities and traditions, in the Middle East or in the Americas, in Europe or in Asia”. (April 3, 2015)